The Moira plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1983. Next is 72° in 2012.
Moira’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cat Hill, about 2,050 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Potsdam Sandstone, from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Moira reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Lawrence Brook, the Deer River, the Saint Regis, the Raquette and the Saint Lawrence: about 25 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moira; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moira has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 98 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Moira normally reaches 43° and falls to 28°. The record high is 66°, in 2005; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1983 at Malone, 12 miles east, 460 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
